ProjectSAM Orchestral Essentials 1 or 2?

[Meteo Xavier]

Hmm, JRR Shop is taking a discount on Orchestral Essentials - About $290 instead of $350.

 

Tempting...

[Torzelan]

And Spitfire isn't actually discounting Albion ONE either.

pretty darn bummed out right now

[Nabeel Ansari]

On 11/26/2015 at 5:51 PM, Torzelan said:

And Spitfire isn't actually discounting Albion ONE either.

pretty darn bummed out right now

It's worth the full price, honestly. I find more value in it than I do in Komplete. (Granted, I'm talking K8 experience here, had a lot less stuff)

[Torzelan]

Yeah don't doubt that, just bummed that "because it's new and/but was also recently on sale" they seemingly arbitrarily decided that they didn't want a whole bunch more people to buy it now (clearly a lot of people were gearing up for Black Friday). From the outside it just seems like a questionable move. Also annoyed that they kept answering specific requests for ONE with "it is on sale... in bundles!" like people would go "ooh right you are, let me drop over a grand on that real quick" but that's just me...

I'll get it whenever I can afford it, would have it already if it would've been on sale though.  The real snag for me is the +20% VAT that takes it from "a lot of money but worth it" to "a LOT of money, still worth it but easier said than paid..."

[AngelCityOutlaw]

Just thought I'd add that ProjectSAM actually do a lot of great little demos/tutorials for their products on YouTube. Check them out.

 

[Meteo Xavier]

Necrobumping this because I'm bored and was searching around Project Sam stuff.

So, 3 years (really? holy shit) later, I ended up getting Orchestral Essentials 1. I like it and have had made use of it in some things, but haven't gotten too much further in my orchestration practice or using much more of it since (ironically because I'm too busy with music work).

The quality in a lot of what I've played with so far definitely fits the bill, though I've found some instruments weird to work with and with certain murky or scratchy qualities to them. The patches and multis aren't well-labeled to give you an idea of what you're going to get with them. I still seem to have some weird issue with Kontakt's sound quality overall where everything still sounds "smaller", "harder", and in some respects of more difficult quality than even the old EWQLSO with PLAY (the composer field would likely call me insane and put me down like Old Yeller if I argued that too much). So I still haven't figured out how to make Kontakt orchestral sets sound as good as the demo tracks and such offer.

That being said, what I especially like about this set is how low-resource demanding it seems to be. I've been keeping watch on newer orchestral sets and they are just getting way out of hand with size - hundreds and hundreds of GB and some patches that are more than a gigabyte themselves to load. You'll have to start doubling the costs of these orchestra libraries to include replacing the whole fucking computer for each one, which takes me out of the equation. ProjectSam's Orchestral Essentials doesn't do any of that. I can load some of what I need, of which OE has some easy-to-work-with strings, keyboards and even a lot of other sound design shit I wasn't expecting like hybrids and synthesizer pulsings, pretty quick on my years-old desktop.

Plus they occasionally update it with more stuff every so often! For free! I'm looking forward to a 1.3 if one ever comes out.

And Angel's right, they do post some not-bad video tutorials showing how to get more out of the libraries, so they take some good care of their paying customers. I probably would like to get OE2 the next time I have the money and opportunity to get it set up.

[Nabeel Ansari]

With SSD's, the RAM usage of patches decreases by lowering the DFD buffer setting in Kontakt. A typical orchestral patch for me is around 75-125 MB or so.

Additionally, one can save a ton of RAM by unloading all mic positions besides the close mic in any patches and using reverb processing in the DAW instead. I recommend this workflow anyway regardless of what era of orchestral library is being used because it just leads to much better mixes and allows for blending libraries from different developers.

[djpretzel]

@Meteo Xavier I've given you a warning and hidden your post; I get that there is animosity but when you come at things sideways like this and bring tons of baggage into an otherwise on-topic conversation, I can't do much. This needs to be hashed out in private, between the two of you, or not at all and you can both use the block/ignore function. Those are the only reasonable options I'm aware of.

...and on-topic, I actually went for SAM Essentials 2 instead of 1, because I liked the place it fit with everything else I had, and because red is better than green. It DOES load faster & chew up less resources than most Spitfire stuff, and while the mic options & general customization is limited, it can sound very good.

[Jorito]

13 hours ago, djpretzel said:

 

... and on-topic, I actually went for SAM Essentials 2 instead of 1, because I liked the place it fit with everything else I had, and because red is better than green. It DOES load faster & chew up less resources than most Spitfire stuff, and while the mic options & general customization is limited, it can sound very good.

The legato trumpet and the 6 french horns from OE2 still frequently find their way in my tracks, so I get ya. If one already has a base orchestral library, then OE 2 might be more interesting. If you don’t have any decent orchestral stuff, I would still recommend OE1 simply because it covers all the basics.

[AngelCityOutlaw]

On 12/8/2018 at 7:59 PM, Meteo Xavier said:

I probably would like to get OE2 the next time I have the money and opportunity to get it set up.

My favourite things from OE1 are the pitched-percussion instruments.

I don't own OE2, and couldn't justify buying it now, but I wish I'd gotten it instead of 1. I really like the fantasy-oriented approach they took with it, it has better legato instruments, etc.